Browsing by Author "Nanayakkara, KADSA"

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item: Conference-Full-text
Application of canonical correlation analysis to study the influence of mathematics on engineering programs: a case study
(IEEE, 2016-04) Nanayakkara, KADSA; Peiris, TSG; Jayasekara, AGBP; Bandara, HMND; Amarasinghe, YWR
Mathematical knowledge is essential to improve the analytical thinking of engineering undergraduates. Exploring more information from existing academic data is an essential aspect of the educational research. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of mathematics performance on different engineering programs. The study was conducted with 626 engineering students from seven different disciplines at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) was employed to investigate the relationship between mathematics courses and other engineering courses with respect to their disciplines. Results of CCA revealed that the mathematics performance in both semester 1 and 2 influences significantly on the students’ academic performance in Level 2 of the seven engineering disciplines considered. Wilk’s lambda test statistic confirmed that only the first canonical variate pair is significant for all disciplines. The squared canonical correlations of first canonical variate pair indicated that the amount of variance between the mathematics performance and academic performance in Level 2 explained varied among seven disciplines from 42% to 68%. The impact is higher from mathematics in semester 2 than that from semester 1 in all disciplines except for Material Science and Engineering discipline. The explainable variability of student academic performance in Level 2 by the canonical variate of mathematics is varied from 27% to 50% among seven disciplines. Based on preliminary analysis, it can be concluded that the performance in mathematics in Level 1 could indicate the trend towards the student academic performance in all engineering programs.
item: Conference-Abstract
Identifying the influence of mathematics on academic performance of engineering students
(2017) Nanayakkara, KADSA; Peiris, TSG
Mathematics plays a major role in higher education as it is particularly essential to develop the analytical thinking of students. Investigating the student academic performance has been a crucial aspect of the educational research recently. The objective of this study is to explore the relationships between students’ mathematics performance in Level 1 and Level 2 with their engineering performance in Level 2 separately. Firstly, Canonical Correlation Analysis was employed to study the joint impact of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 on engineering performance. The two adjusted analyses; Partial Canonical Correlation Analysis and Part Canonical Correlation Analysis were used to determine the unique effect of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. The study was conducted with engineering undergraduates from Chemical and Process Engineering discipline at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Results revealed that the mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 jointly influenced on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. Adjusted analyses showed that unique effect of mathematics in Level 2 is significantly higher compared to the unique effect of mathematics in Level 1 on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. But, there would be a notable indirect effect of mathematics in Level 1 on engineering performance in Level 2. It can be concluded that the combined effect of mathematics in both Level 1 and Level 2 is immensely beneficial to improve the overall academic performance at the end of Level 2 of the engineering students.
item: Thesis-Full-text
A Statistical model to identify the influence of mathematics on students' performance in engineering programs
Nanayakkara, KADSA; Peiris, TSG
Mathematics plays a major role in higher education as it is particularly essential to develop the analytical thinking of students in a wide range of disciplines, especially, in engineering sciences. Therefore, exploring the student academic performance has been a crucial aspect of the educational research recently. In this study, the impact of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 on student engineering performance in Level 2 was investigated for seven engineering disciplines at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka under two scenarios: (i) effect of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 simultaneously and (ii) effect of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 separately by using unadjusted and adjusted Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA). A theoretical model underlying relationship between two measurements, mathematics performance and engineering performance was developed based on literature review. The Structural Equation Modeling based on Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) technique was used to validate the conceptual model and proposed an index to measure the mathematical influence on student engineering performance. The first canonical variate of engineering was found to be the best proxy indicator for the engineering performance. The impact of mathematics in semester 2 is significantly higher compared with the impact of mathematics in semester 1 on engineering performance in Level 2. The mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 jointly influenced on the engineering performance in Level 2 irrespective of the engineering disciplines and the level of impact of mathematics varies among engineering disciplines. The individual effect of mathematics in Level 2 is significantly higher compared to the individual effect of mathematics in Level 1 on engineering performance in Level 2. The mathematics in Level 1 is still important in affecting students’ engineering performance in Level 2 as there is a significant effect indirectly. The results obtained in this study can be utilized in curriculum development in mathematics modules.